PREFACE 



Althongli the study of the asymmetry of protoplasm 

 was begun by Louis Pasteur about a century ago, it did 

 not receive from the biologists the attention which it de- 

 serves. The observations on that subject are scattered 

 and need to be brought together into a separate division 

 of experimental biology. The author of the present mon- 

 ograph, who has for several years been engaged in expe- 

 rimental studies of the structure and of the activity of 

 living systems as related to the asymmetric configuration 

 of their constituents, intends to review here this scat- 

 tered literature and to discuss the various problems which 

 the subject involves. 



Pasteur would, no doubt, rejoice in the importance that 

 a number of questions related to the asymmetry of proto- 

 plasm have acquired in the development of medical 

 sciences. The recent findings on anthrax, a subject to 

 which Pasteur has contributed so much, illustrate this 

 point. Bruckner and Ivanovics showed in 1937, in the lab- 

 oratory of Professor Szent-Gyorgyi, that the unnatural 

 optical isomer of glutamic acid, which was not found 

 anywhere before in organic nature, enters into the compo- 

 sition of the capsules which enclose the anthrax bacilli. 

 The capsules are responsible for the virulence of the 

 bacilli, and the investigators just mentioned suggest that 

 the protective role of the capsules is due to the unnatural 

 configuration of glutamic acid. 



The author wishes to express his thanks to Professor 

 W. W. Alpatov (Moscow) and to Professor W. J. Ver- 

 nadsky (Moscow) for their aid in the course of the prep- 

 aration of this work, and to Professor B. J. Luyet (St. 

 Louis) for the revision of the manuscript. 



G. F. Gause. 



